Last week focused a lot of attention on New York Times reporter James Risen, who is facing the threat of jail time for refusing to testify in a leak case against former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling. The Supreme Court refused to hear Risen’s appeal of a subpoena to testify in June.

On Monday, a bunch of fellow Pulitzer Prize winners signed a statement supporting Risen. On Thursday, a coalition of press freedom groups submitted 100,000 signatures calling on DOJ to halt its pursuit of Risen’s testimony. In an interview with Maureen Dowd after a press conference on press freedom on Thursday, Risen called President Obama, “the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.”

Meanwhile, even as Risen waits to find out whether the Department of Justice will send him to jail to attempt to force him to testify about his source, Sterling also waits, as he has since January 2011, when he was first arrested.

This week Elise Jordan, wife of famed journalist Michael Hastings, who recently died under suspicious circumstances, corroborated this reporter’s sources that CIA Director, John Brennan was Hastings next exposé project.

Last month a source provided San Diego 6 News with an alarming email hacked from super secret CIA contractor Stratfor’s President Fred Burton. The email (link here) was posted on WikiLeaks and alleged that then Obama counter-terrorism Czar Brennan, was in charge of the government’s continued crackdown or witch-hunt on investigative journalists.

After providing the Stratfor email to the CIA for comment, the spymaster’s spokesperson responded in lightning speed. Two emails were received; one acknowledging Hastings was working on a CIA story and the other said, “Without commenting on information disseminated by WikiLeaks, any suggestion that Director Brennan has ever attempted to infringe on constitutionally-protected press freedoms is offensive and baseless.”

Between Dianne Feinstein’s adulation of the drone program (and her lies that civilian deaths were in the single digits) and the Republican filibuster of Chuck Hagel (based on his non-existent relationship with the non-existent “Friends of Hamas”), there actually was a confirmation hearing this past week from our lazy, incompetent Congress. John Brennan, who some may remember was blocked in 2008 due to the objections of civil libertarians, is on schedule to become President Barack Obama’s newest right-wing torture-happy appointee to the head of the CIA. He will continue to perpetuate myths of national security and intelligence work, the merits of extreme rendition and shady intervention in foreign affairs.

Mother Jones‘ Adam Serwer has compiled a great list of the unanswered questions of accountability and transparency in this hearing, what has now become a hallmark of the Bush/Obama era and will certainly be the norm during Brennan’s tenure.… Read the rest

We may finally get specifics on Obama’s special “matrix” which tells when to assassinate U.S. citizens by drone without due process. Via Wired:

The man in charge of America’s drone wars will face Senate questioning about perhaps their most controversial aspect: when the president can target American citizens for death.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter on Monday to John Brennan, the White House’s counterterrorism adviser and nominee to be head of the CIA, asking for an outline of the legal and practical rules that underpin the U.S. government’s targeted killing of American citizens suspected of working with al-Qaida. The Obama administration has repeatedly resisted disclosing any such information about its so-called “disposition matrix” targeting terrorists, especially where it concerns possible American targets. Brennan reportedly oversees that matrix from his White House perch, and would be responsible for its execution at CIA director.

“How much evidence does the President need to determine that a particular American can be lawfully killed?” Wyden, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, asks in the letter.